Transcript:
Merry Christmas Alliance Canada.
I love Christmas. Holiday parties, annual traditions, times with friends and family.
And who doesn't love presents?
It's a really busy time for most of us, filled with activity, and it's a season with heightened emotions.
For some, everything in the world is going well. Many people just seem happier. Maybe you planned a great gift for someone special for those parents and favorite friends, or uncles and aunts or little ones.
The kids are excited about what's under the tree. The desserts are on point.
For others, though, Christmas is a painful reminder of things that are missing or amiss. Someone has passed, a difficult year is ending, or maybe there's not enough to go around.
Alliance Canada, I want to encourage you, as you approach this season, that the God we serve is a God who is able to do far more abundantly than we can ask or think or imagine.
Our God is a God of hope.
Christmas often stands as a milestone in our culture and our calendar. And while it may be a time filled with both joy and grief, for many, it is also a reminder to us of God's unfailing grace and mercy towards us.
This mixture of joy and grief is not unlike the first Christmas. Joseph and Mary were forced to travel at the height of Mary's pregnancy, a pregnancy that many in their community would have viewed with question and even scorn.
They had no place to stay, even though they went to a town that likely had family in it. No one would host them and whispers probably followed them.
The country around them was a political landscape that was filled with anger, resentment and fear. It was tax season, after all, with taxes being paid to a foreign oppressor.
The newborn Jesus was a joyous event. Shepherds were celebrating with joy. Angels appeared and the Magi traveled a great distance to see what was taking place.
The Bible says that Mary treasured these things in her heart. There was joy, and at the same time, there were reminders that many things weren't right.
For Mary and Joseph, these two realities of joy and grief lived in tension in this moment. And that's exactly the space where God in flesh appeared.
In ways that nobody except a faithful teenage girl perhaps foresaw.
And it is into this space, God brought incredible joy, life, and the light of the world.
Jesus came and dwelled among us. God and man together in beautiful harmony for the first time since the beginning of creation. A call back to what is a foreshadowing of what we will experience one day when Jesus returns for his bride.
I can't wait.
Alliance Canada, I want us to focus on Jesus. God is on the move. Advent means arrival. This is a season of celebration of the hope and peace Jesus brings to us.
I am praying for each Alliance Church family for you specifically, during this season, that arrival will be a powerfully true word for you.
Now, as Christmas draws near, I pray that whatever situation you find yourself in, you will recognize God's presence is with you and experience his great joy.
May remembering Jesus's arrival mark this season for us, filled with reflection on God's faithfulness to us in 2024 and with great anticipation for all he has for us in the days to come.
Merry Christmas everybody!